The ultimate dream for any farmer is to sell his produce directly to consumers for a maximum retail price fixed by him. There are some in Punjab trying to realise this utopia. Tarsem Singh turned full-time farmer in 2008, after retiring as principal of a government senior secondary school.
Cane yields from organic farming — using only animal dung, vermicompost and jeev amrit (a cow dung-urine-jaggery-water mixture), as opposed to chemical fertilisers — were hardly 200 quintals per acre, as against 300 quintals-plus through the regular inorganic route. But Singh also began making organic gur (jaggery) and shakkar (powder) — employing vegetable extracts, instead of sodium hydrosulphite, as juice clarification agent — from his sugarcane.
“The future for farmers is in selling from fields and not selling in mandis. We should be price makers, not price takers.”
Read the complete story by Raakhi Jagga published in The Indian Express...
